Sir David Attenborough and the World Land Trust Launch Ecuador Webcam

On the 17th January the World Land Trust and their Patron, Sir David Attenborough, will launch Webcam in the Forest at the Linnaean Society of London, as part of its ongoing programme of showing to the world at large, conservation in action.

This new initiative by the World Land Trust involves installing live streaming web cams in the middle of the Ecuador rainforest within one of their Fundación Jocotoco reserves. The webcam will focus on a hummingbird feeder in an area where, so far, 32 species of hummingbirds are known to occur. To celebrate this exciting launch the World Land Trust are offering a week's accommodation at the Umbrella Bird Lodge in the heart of the Buenaventura Reserve in Ecuador for the first person who can freeze frame a new species of hummingbird identified by the webcam.

The World Land Trust is the first conservation charity to achieve high quality live streaming direct from the rainforest and the pilot project has certainly been a challenge. Despite the fact that it has taken six months to install the equipment and establish satellite connection, the WLT is confident that this initiative will increase support for its projects by making the reality of the rainforest accessible to all.

The WLT hopes, eventually, to be able to implement similar webcams in the other countries around the globe where they have projects; these include vital corridors for Indian Elephant to the Atlantic rainforests of Brazil. John Burton, CEO of the Trust, says: "I am confident that these webcams will ultimately become a vital tool for World Land Trust and its education programme and we can't wait to be able to offer virtual rainforest tours to our supporters".

Webcam in the Forest enables World Land Trust to highlight firsthand the very real problems facing critically threatened wildlife and their disappearing habitats to a world wide audience.